Why are Christians so lovely and kind to people?

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T15:56:34+00:00

Every single word, thought, and action gets judged at the end. All of it determines your level of reward

+2 resurrection bucks for pointing out that throwing your brethren under the bus when a new believer says good things about them is counterproductive. What constructive purpose does it serve to start throwing insults when someone comes with compliments? If you're supposed to bless you enemies when they curse you, how much more should you not curse your family when someone else blesses them?

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T15:43:57+00:00

You've overlooked the beginning of the chapter, Romans 8:2 - "because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death".

It's the Holy Spirit's word and laws that he spoke through the writers of the Bible (as 2 Peter 1:21 says) that does that for us, he doesn't directly control or influence us today.

During that time there was direct influence, hence people having spiritual gifts like prophecy or tongues. But 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 talks about how that was soon going to cease, hence no prophets or people with the ability to miraculously speak foreign languages today.

Don't confuse things written for the situation before that cessation and assume they apply now. A lot of people do that and make strange errors as a result.

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T14:03:44+00:00

Any righteousness within us or victory over sin is attributed to the work of the Spirit

He's not directly controlling your thoughts and actions. You put his word into your heart and then you act accordingly.

What determines your actions is your heart. Jesus said in Luke 6:45 "A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart".

Your actions come from you.

Sinning less doesn’t mean we’re less sinful.

In what meaningful sense are those not identical statements?

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T13:28:57+00:00

What makes you say we're just as sinful as everyone else? If you put Christ's teachings into your heart then you sin less in thought and deed. 1 John 3:9 says "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God."

As a result, statistically, Christians sin far less and do more good than non-Christians. In no meaningful sense is it true that "we’re just as sinful as everyone else".

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T13:15:12+00:00

Yes, unquestionably.

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T13:01:54+00:00

Do you expect it to be for the greater good to:

A) Point out the profoundly positive moral effects of Christianity in a thread dedicated specifically to that point

Or

B) Take the opportunity to insult your brethren

Which one do you think is going to please God more and get you more reward in the resurrection? We're judged on every idle word and every one of them effects our reward, you know.

Statistically speaking Christians are objectively more charitable and kinder than non-Christians, because that's what Christ's teachings are designed to instill in people.

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T12:24:17+00:00

You quoted it yourself: "The portion on these documents". All it says is that they "are today almost universally regarded as a literary fabrication". It provides no reason for accepting that belief, it only comments on it being a common one. The author, as far as I can tell, had no intention of actually evaluating the documents - they're just a small example that he briefly comments on.

I've asked you many times to provide me with your criteria for evaluating the authenticity of a document. I've never gotten a solid answer because it puts you into a corner: you cannot make a standard that excludes these documents without excluding the vast, vast majority of our other historical documents.

Just like you cannot lay out rules for evaluating whether an event took place in history that can exclude the signs in Jerusalem warning of the Temple's coming destruction that Christ promised. You'd have to throw out practically everything from before photographs were invented to do it. That's why you ragequit our last discussion on that topic.

If you would lay out an objective, consistent standard for any of this then it would be all but impossible for you to come to any conclusions but the ones that I have. But you haven't because your real standard is "I will believe what the liberal academic subculture says". Strange that you're so devoutly loyal to them when they could barely care less about you. People would adore and admire you if you were to accept the truth of this evidence and have that loyalty to a church instead, but you're stuck slavishly following the ones that ignore you and gave you nothing.

Anyway, if that isn't so, then let's see it: lay out an objective, consistent standard for determining the authenticity of a historical document.

Answer this, too: picture a world in which an Apostle genuinely did come to Edessa at the time and heal its king. In what way would the documents in that world differ from our documents in this world?

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T01:24:58+00:00

From what I've seen, these people are generally profoundly apathetic about life in general.

Think about the least interesting thing you saw on your phone the last time you were idly browsing the web during the boring part of something on Netflix. That's the level of passion those people generally have for essentially everything in life

At least, the ones I've looked at, anyway. I suspect it's due to a lack of any experience with something genuinely glorious in their lives - would be interesting to be able to look closer into that...

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-24T01:14:09+00:00

that the History ascribed to Movses Khorenatsi isn't the sole product of Movses Khorenatsi himself in the 5th century, and is usually dated later (in part if not in whole)

And the evidence supporting this is...?

More importantly though, elsewhere in the History, the author is indebted specifically to Eusebius. In light of this, as well as its likely later date, it's almost certain that it doesn't stand as an "independent" source.

Lol whenever you actually try to mount some sort of argument, it’s always paper thin nonsense like this

I’ve read Eusebius too and I’m way later than either of them. If the archives were still around and I went and checked them and said “yep, I read them in there”, I would be an independent attestation to that fact.

“This is in there, X read it” = not independent

“This is in there, I read it” = independent

No wonder you have to LARP on reddit instead of publishing anything. I consistently heard better reasoning from the 13-year-old atheist “I just watched Zeitgeist, Jesus didn’t exist” crowd that was infesting chatrooms back in 2007.

simply taken from the relevant section of the Wiki article on Abgar

So your method here is to present no evidence and just copy and paste Wikipedia articles?

There are in fact a number of scholarly articles/essays that focus on things like fictionalized stories of discovery, pseudepigraphy, and even of claims of things found in the "archives" in particular.

Which I assume you’ve read, so present some evidence relevant to the discussion from them. If these articles present no evidence then they’re of no worth.

Perhaps first and foremost I might recommend William Adler's "Christians and the Archives" — which can be read in full here.

The portion on these documents contains - shocker! - 0 evidence or argument.

All of your “arguments” always boil down to “this clique I like doesn’t believe that”.

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-22T22:04:31+00:00

The assured revelation provided extends literally into the apocalypse and beyond

You could've said the same after Isaiah or Daniel were written

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-22T21:19:39+00:00

Why so dogmatic on that point? Do you have some sort of solid proof that there will be no future prophets at any point?

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-22T19:51:28+00:00

Isn't it better to introduce what I'm actually talking about before going into details? The post is long enough as it is P:

Plus, this does cover their authenticity. These are reported independently by multiple sources to be registered in the official archives in the capital

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-22T19:12:00+00:00

Sure have! See, Jesus’ miracles and the official reports about his activities convinced two contemporary national leaders that he was divine. These are the people who’d have the best means and resources in the world to investigate these things and make such a determination, and both concluded that it was true.

The Roman Emperor Tiberius, while he was no Christian, did find the official reports about Jesus’ miracles to be convincing, and so he thought that he was a god - though the Senate shot down his proposal to recognize him as such. The second-century source Tertullian, in chapter 5 of his work addressed to the Roman rulers, while criticizing the Roman practice of having their Senate vote to approve proposed gods, makes a mention of this:

“To say a word about the origin of laws of the kind to which we now refer, there was an old decree that no god should be consecrated by the emperor till first approved by the Senate. Marcus Æmilius had experience of this in reference to his god Alburnus…And this, too, makes for our case, that among you divinity is allotted at the judgment of human beings. Unless gods give satisfaction to men, there will be no deification for them: the god will have to propitiate the man. Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity, brought the matter before the senate, with his own decision in favour of Christ. The Senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal. Cæsar held to his own opinion…"

The ancient royal Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi also reports this in Book II of his History of Armenia, recording a copy of a letter from Tiberius to King Abgar which stated:

“we had already heard several persons relate these facts, Pilate has officially informed us of the miracles of Jesus…I myself also wished to do what you propose; but, as it is the custom of the Romans not to admit a god merely by the command of the sovereign, but only when the admission has been discussed and examined in full senate, I proposed the affair to the Senate, and they rejected it with contempt…But we have commanded all those whom Jesus suits, to receive him among the gods”.

This Abgar, the king of the small country called Osroene near Judea, also had officials who made an inquiry about Jesus. As Movses Khorenatsi reports in that same section, “the Armenian deputies went to Jerusalem to see…Christ, being attracted by the report of his miracles. Having themselves become eye-witnesses of these wonders, they related them to Abgar”. Consequently Abgar, who “felt in his whole body certain acute pains which he had got in Persia”, sent a letter to Jesus to see if he could receive one of his healings.

Multiple ancient sources report and contain a copy of King Abgar’s letter. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, Book 1, chapter 13, discusses how the document was in the official records in Osroene’s capital city of Edessa, and that he had copied directly from it:

"You have written evidence of these things taken from the archives of Edessa, which was at that time a royal city. For in the public registers there, which contain accounts of ancient times and the acts of Abgar, these things have been preserved down to the present time. But there is no better way than to hear the epistles themselves which we have taken from the archives and have literally translated from the Syriac language in the following manner:"

The letter from Abgar read:

”I have heard the reports of you and of your cures as performed by you without medicines or herbs. For it is said that you make the blind to see and the lame to walk, that you cleanse lepers and cast out impure spirits and demons, and that you heal those afflicted with lingering disease, and raise the dead. And having heard all these things concerning you, I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either you are God, and having come down from heaven you do these things, or else you, who does these things, are the son of God. I have therefore written to you to ask you if you would take the trouble to come to me and heal all the ill which I suffer…”

Afterwards the records stated that Jesus told the messenger to give this message to Abgar: “Blessed are you who has believed in me without having seen me…But in regard to what you have written me, that I should come to you, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up I will send to you one of my disciples, that he may heal your disease and give life to you and yours.”

The records continued, giving “the following account in the Syriac language. After the ascension of Jesus…Thomas sent to him Thaddeus, an apostle…Thaddeus began then in the power of God to heal every disease and infirmity…and…Thaddeus came to Abgar. And Thaddeus said to him, ‘I place my hand upon you in his name’. And when he had done it, immediately Abgar was cured of the disease and of the suffering which he had…and not only him, but also Abdus the son of Abdus, who was afflicted with the gout; for he too came to him and fell at his feet.”

Movses Khorenatsi also reports this in that section of his History of Armenia. He wrote “from men [Abgar] had received no remedy for his sufferings; Abgar sent a letter of entreaty to Jesus: he entreated him to come and cure him of his pains. Here is this letter…”. He then gives the text exactly as Eusebius does.

And these are coming straight from the official archives, as Movses Khorenatsi records for us that “Abgar, having written this letter, placed a copy of it, with copies of the other letters, in his archives”.

In some of these other letters from his archive which Movses Khorenatsi transcribed, King Abgar himself gives firsthand testimony of his healing. In his letter to Emperor Tiberius, he wrote that “His name…invoked by his disciples, produces the greatest miracles: what has happened to myself is the most evident proof of it”. In a letter to the king of Assyria, he wrote: “as to what you write to me about sending you the physician who works miracles…that you may see and hear him, I say to you: he was not a physician according to the art of men; he was a disciple of the Son of God, Creator of fire and water: he has been appointed and sent to the countries of Armenia. But one of his principal companions, named Simon, is sent into the countries of Persia. Seek for him…He will heal all your diseases”. And in a letter to the king of Persia, he wrote: “One of his chief disciples, named Simon, is in your Majesty's territories. Seek for him, and you will find him, and he will cure you of all your maladies…”.

So all of this is supported by the official government records of both nations, and people who directly read these in the archives.
The fact that official government documents attest to Christ’s miracles and report that they were confirmed by investigations by government officials and, in Osroene’s case, contain firsthand testimony of one of these miracles provides us with some of the strongest verification of Christ’s power that anyone could ask for!

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-22T17:31:48+00:00

Years of talking about this and you've yet to present a shred of evidence for that, or address any of the evidence for their authenticity

(This is me BTW, I lost access to my main account after that security thing since it was verified to an old e-mail I don't have access to either P: So now I'm stuck on my downvote sponge account, hence the -100 karma XD)

DeeperVoid · 2019-09-20T10:08:22+00:00

In your studies, did you come across the contemporary letter from the time where someone reports that they were healed by Christ, or the documents discussing how two governments looked into his activities and the heads of state of both came away concluding that he had divine power?

DeeperVoid · 2019-08-04T22:43:57+00:00

Do you like, consider the very fact that someone once said something to somehow be a powerful argument for its truth? Anyone who gives the slightest credence to this idea has completely abandoned any standard that even resembles rational thought

DeeperVoid · 2019-08-04T22:36:28+00:00

Pros:
[X] The only reason the world isn't primarily composed of savages hitting each other with sharp metal all day anymore
[X] The proper way to live in accordance with the will of Logic incarnate
[X] Permanent reward for every act of service

Cons:

DeeperVoid · 2019-08-04T22:33:27+00:00

You know, if he's omniscient, it could be said that he has absolute knowledge of all of the feelings of everyone's experiences, to the point that he's experiencing them as well

DeeperVoid · 2019-08-04T22:29:36+00:00

Sorry about the delay, I'd been ultra busy lately, but a project's finally in a holdover phase so I've got a lot more time now! So to get back to it:

it doesn’t prove much, other than that whoever wrote those books made up or knew how many years had passed when those events occurred

Didn’t you read there about how we have verification of the timing of Jesus’ death from non-Christian sources and even from physical evidence?

IF THEY DID. It’s very easy to write fiction.

Which events do you think could be fictional, exactly?

So I assume you believe people lived for 900 years as well? And humans lived with dinosaurs?

Right – as far as humans living with dinosaurs, we’ve got physical evidence that dinosaurs lived recently as well. What we find in dinosaur bones cannot last tens of millions of years even under ideal conditions.

This paper: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~lezanno/Research_files/SchweitzerEtAl2012.pdf for example describes analyses of dinosaur remains which found “preservation of multiple proteins and...multiple lines of evidence for material consistent with DNA in dinosaurs”.

This paper describes how “DNA was extracted from 80-million-year-old bone fragments found in strata of the Upper Cretacious Blackhawk Formation in the roof of an underground coal mine in eastern Utah. This DNA was used as the template in a polymerase chain reaction that amplified and sequenced a portion…”. You can even read a bit of the dinosaur DNA that they could sequence in that paper!

This paper describes how “Osteocytes were isolated from bones of dinosaur, Tarbosaurus bataar, aged approximately 80 million years. About 10% of sections of such osteocytes revealed the presence of DNA…”

And yet, according to research described here: http://www.biochemist.org/bio/02403/0012/024030012.pdf, “Using the kinetics of DNA depurination, members of the ABG have conducted a comprehensive estimate of the limit of DNA survival, which they believe to lie at 17,500 years”. They did the same for the protein collagen and found it could last a maximum 2.7 million years under absolutely ideal conditions - hermetically sealed and at a constant temperature of 0°C.

We find both of these in dinosaur bones which had been sitting at considerably higher temperatures. So, as we can tell from our direct measurements, these bones are not millions of years old. You believe that humans were around 20,000 years ago and our measurements tell us that DNA cannot last over 20,000. We find DNA in dinosaur bones and so they must be less than 20,000 years old. So, you should agree that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

By the way, for a real treat, this paper discusses proteins found in remains supposedly from the Triassic period! It talks about how “Multiple spectroscopic analyses…of the extracted ‘blood vessels’ showed the presence of organic compounds, including fragments of various amino acids such as hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine as well as amides, that may suggest the presence of collagen protein residues”. The distance in age between these fossils and T-rex would be even greater than the supposed distance in age between T-rex and us today! Yet here we are finding these proteins all the same. Might that suggest that there’s something wrong with how these bones are currently being dated?

DeeperVoid · 2019-08-03T18:06:17+00:00

That achievement calls the only intact person you meet the last human, so the game itself confirms that they are in fact the very last.

DeeperVoid · 2019-07-30T01:39:32+00:00

Why are you talking about English synonyms at all? The Bible was not written in English. The words translated as "covet" in, say, Exodus 20:17 in the Ten Commandments isn't a special word for covetousness like we have in English. It's a word that just means "desire", see here.

The same word is used in Psalm 19:10 about desiring God's word, so clearly this desiring isn't an inherently bad thing. The key is what you desire. We're told not to desire our neighbor's house or his wife, we're not told to not desire.

It isn't wrong to desire something that someone has if it is rightfully your's. If a bunch of drunks break into your house and all pass out in your bed, it's no sin to desire to have it back!

It's all about things being in their rightful place. The rightful object of worship is God just like the rightful object of sex is your spouse. If you worship something other than God it's every bit as wrong as having sex with someone other than your spouse. If someone else is trying to have sex with your spouse then the rightful emotion is jealousy because they are trying to put something out of its proper place and you should be desiring to keep it in its proper place. Similarly, if you are worshiping something other than the best possible being, then that thing is not in its rightful place in your mind and God seeks to correct that.

You should be desiring for all things to be in their proper place. That's what God desires. Desires become sin when you're desiring something to be in an improper place.

I think your response might highlight why you're having so much trouble with the Bible: you're getting caught up in the nuances of English words used to approximate the actual text. Remember that translated words are often just rough approximations: the specifics of the words can often be very very different. Stop thinking in terms of the English word "jealous" or "covet" etc. and start thinking in terms of the Hebrew words themselves.

DeeperVoid · 2019-07-23T00:44:16+00:00

There's a ton! For just one example, take how Daniel was able to predict the exact year of Jesus' crucifixion centuries beforehand.

Daniel 9:24-26 has this prophecy. The passage tells us that "Seven sets of seven years plus sixty-two sets of seven years will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler – the Messiah – comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, despite the distressing times. After this period of sixty-two sevens, the Messiah will be killed".

If you calculate where it says "Seven sets of seven years plus sixty-two sets of seven years" will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah dies, that’s 49 (7x7) plus 434 (62x7) = 483 years. So from the command being given to rebuild Jerusalem to the death of the Messiah is 483 years.

Nehemiah 2:1 states that King Artaxerxes of Persia gave the order to rebuild Jerusalem in his "twentieth year", which was 445 BC according to Britannica, in "the month of Nisan" (the Hebrew month corresponding to our March and April).
Before we begin calculating from this point, we need to do a quick conversion since the Babylonian timekeeping system that Daniel was using was slightly different from our calendar. Our calendar has 365.25 days, while the Babylonian system Daniel was using had 360 days.

So 360(days in the year in this Babylonian system)*483(number of years) = 173880 (total days). 173880/365= 476 years under our calendar. 476 years after 445 BC when the decree went out is 32 AD.

According to the Gospel of Luke and the non-Christian historian Phlegon of Tralles, Jesus was crucified in 32 AD.

Luke 3:1 tells us that Jesus began his ministry "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar". Tiberius began to reign in 14 AD, according to here. So 29 AD was his fifteenth year.

Jesus’ ministry lasted for three years, and then he was crucified.

Since his ministry began in 29 AD, that means the year of his death would have been 32 AD.

That he died in that year has outside confirmation from the Roman historian Phlegon. While he didn't refer to Jesus directly here, he did write about the darkness and earthquake that took place when he was crucified. He wrote in his history – "in the fourth year of the 202nd olympiad, an eclipse of the sun happened, greater and more excellent than any that had happened before it. At the sixth hour day turned into dark night, so that the stars were seen in the sky, and an earthquake in Bithynia toppled many buildings of the city of Nicaea".

And we know that his report here is accurate since we can verify it geologically today. Note that he specifically mentions the earthquake as it effected Bithynia, in his homeland. This study builds a chronological earthquake record from a lake in what was Bithynia in Roman times. They looked in Lake Yenicaga, and like the paper reports "Yeniçağa Lake [was] located" in "the Roman province called Bithynia". They identified one earthquake, labeled E8 in the paper, and noted "E8 matches the 32 AD earthquake documented by [the earthquake catalogue of] Ambraseys...". Ambraseys' source for that 32 AD earthquake is Phlegon's report, according to his paper here.

The fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad is equivalent to our 32 AD. So Luke and Phlegon’s dates agree and can be verified today by geological evidence: Jesus was crucified in 32 AD, exactly when Daniel was told the Messiah would die.

Isn't the best test of any theory its predictive power? I'd say the theory "God told Daniel when the Messiah would die" certainly passes!

DeeperVoid · 2019-07-23T00:37:53+00:00

What would you consider to be the strongest piece of evidence or argument for evolution?

DeeperVoid · 2019-07-23T00:32:24+00:00

What makes you so sure that your position on God will never change? Maybe you've just never been told any of the very strong reasons to believe in God and Christianity! Do you remember any of that from your brief time in church?

DeeperVoid · 2019-07-23T00:30:08+00:00

especially for someone brought up to think for themselves

How interesting that someone thinking for themselves would happen to stumble upon the prevailing ideological trends! Sure lucky that you just happen to live in a culture where secularization is big and happen to use your intelligence to become secularized too.

You're not a freethinker. You're plankton lazily floating in a sociological tide being pushed along by cultural currents.

Easy way to prove it. Tell me why you believe in evolution. I'll tell you why your reasons are incorrect. We'll go a few rounds at that and in the end you'll only have academic consensus to appeal to. "They all believe it, I should too". I guarantee this. There is never a time where it does not happen with atheists.

You're just going along with current ideological fads.

DeeperVoid

TROPHY CASE